HP Lovecraft inspired games are the popular bane of the tabletop world but is it really as long and tiresome as you have heard? Yes, but well, it’s also quite fun.
Along with Eldritch Horror, some of the titles you might have heard of are Arkham Horror, Elder Sign, and Mansions of Madness to name a few. You can also find Lovecraft themed expansions (usually marked by Call of Cthulhu mythos) in other games such as Munchkin and Fluxx. If board games or themed card games aren’t your taste, you can also chose among the many Lovecrafted RPG systems/ storylines out there. Google is your friend.
Choices and decisions aside, in order to ensure full satisfaction in the actual game play of Eldritch horror (or other such games in the Lovecraft series) a couple things are recommended:
- Time: give yourself 4 hours to play the game, if you haven’t played it before make sure you pick a time of the day that works for everyone, take a lunch break or dinner break if needed, this also helps to smooth along game play.
- Mood setting: do it. Play some music in the background, not too loud or harsh. We use, as funny as it sounds, jazzandrain.com as a fun and subtle scene setter for our game. Don’t like jazz? Any thing weather sounding or halloween spooky setting but soft music works well. You might want to try for intense music with jump scare moments, but I would advise against it as it gets annoying quickly when on repeat.
I would say ‘good company’ is also a recommendation but for those who have played board games for as long and as passionately as I have will know that any game can tear a rip in the fabric of a good friendship no matter what the difficulty, peace or backstabbing aspect or ease involved. Just saying. Play with people who you like and think you will continue being friends with, unless of course Eldritch Horror eats up your friend jumanji style, you have been warned.
All that aside, you don’t have to really go to great lengths to enjoy this game. After the bad review of Arkham horror that Shut up and Sit down did, it added to the discouragement and scare that a lot of board gamers had heard before about the Lovecraft games: BEWARE. But also like SU&SD, I feel that Eldritch Horror is quite playable and enjoyable at that.
Compared to Arkham Horror, Eldritch Horror is an identical but updated version. A lot of the aspects- scare factors, turn order, over all goal, and characters are the same but a lot about it is different too. It cleans up a lot of what people were unhappy about with Arkham Horror, there are less mechanics involved while still staying true to the alluring puzzle that is the Lovecraft mythos.
Tabletop geeks who aren’t into the whole Lovecraft phenomenon will be pleasantly surprised. It’s worth a try I think. Starting out seems daunting but it is fun if you turn aside your dislike for the theme or impatience for long play.
Pros
- Entertaining, exciting, intense moments
- Team building, cooperative
- You don’t need to have an understanding of the mythos to play
- Fun characters and different monsters for dozens of game play possibilities
- Nice art work, always a plus
- Not as complicated as it seems
- You can pick up a new character and keep playing if your character dies, no worries (makes the game a little easier and keeps players in game)
- Things happen, there is always something going on in this game, you think you’ll get a break but another twist is right around the corner ready to screw you up
Cons
- Seems daunting to learn, may put you off playing (but it’s really not once you understand, which sounds like a given but once you play once you can explain it in a small amount of time to new players, much shorter time than it took for you to figure out if you are playing correctly on your first time round)
- Can be very long or reasonable, you won’t know until you play so leave a lot of time
Have you played Eldritch Horror before? Maybe it’s just not your style, that’s fair. Let me know what you think! I played the other night and we won! We played with 6 people up against Shub-Niggurath: The Black Goat of the Woods. Twas good fun.
My Rating: 3/5
November 16, 2015
Tabletop News 